I am taken to see Grandma. She has just woken. She smiles and whistles and raises her eyebrows. She looks so sweet in her hospital gown, her white hair on the big pillow. A nurse comes up and says Grandma can go home now, where are her clothes? I say I think she must have come in her nightdress. The nurse sighs and says, of course, and here it is and could you be as quick as possible, we need the bed. I feel so embarrassed that Grandma is a fraud. Mary and I draw the curtains round the bed and change Grandma’s hospital nightdress for her own. She is indignant, objects, wants to be left alone. We hustle her out of bed. The nurse says we can use a wheelchair. We push Grandma into a wheelchair. She complains bitterly. We hurry out of the ward, head for the lift. Grandma says repeatedly what’s the hurry, what is going on, that there’s no need for this.
Horrible Stuart is waiting downstairs. He is in his uniform. Grandma gasps at the sight of him and whispers, ‘It’s the Polis.’ Stuart says he has to hurry, he’s on duty, come on, Mother.
Who are you mothering?
You. Try to stand.
Fancy, a policeman, the shoes on him.
Stand, Mother.
What size do you take? Was your father a big man?
You should know.
Who?
You.
What?
For heaven’s sake, Mother.
Who are you mothering?
Stuart is furious. He manhandles Grandma into his car without speaking to her again and Mary and I get in the back meekly. I hate Stuart so much for his insensitivity that I grow bold. I ask him if he will please take Mary home first. Mary protests, she says she can walk. Stuart grunts then silently drives Mary home. I tell her to have a good rest as she struggles out, and I thank her profusely. The minute she has gone Stuart starts. He asks where the bloody hell my parents are. Grandma says heh, language. Stuart asks what they were playing at, why wasn’t he told they were going to lumber him. Lumber, I query. Grandma says she’s had enough lumbago to last her a lifetime. It was a chance they took, I say. Well, Stuart says, they better hadn’t take it again because he’s not having any, he’s had enough, he’s always made it plain that this kind of thing is just not on. Grandma says she should think not, people have no respect these days. By then we are home. Stuart shovels Grandma out as brutally as he pushed her in. He has no pity in him. The minute we are in Grandma’s kitchen, he says he’s off. He says he will be ringing Dad. I say sarcastically that I’ll tell him, that I’m sure Dad will look forward to it.
Grandma asks have the men gone now? I say yes. She says thank goodness, they’re only a nuisance, we’re better without them. I can’t muster the energy to dress her. I put a shawl over her dressing gown and pull it tight. She says do I want to strangle her? I give her a kiss. She says oh, my word, is it my money you’re after? I make tea and toast and put the radio on. It is ‘Down Your Way’, which Grandma likes. I feel quite shaken. The ward Grandma was in was full of such deathly ill-looking people, all lying pale in obedient rows. Some were groaning, the woman in the next bed silently crying. And there Grandma sits, at home, bright in her tartan shawl, slurping tea, crunching toast, talking back to the radio, quite oblivious to what has happened.
I wish Mum and Dad were back.
I wish Bridget was here.
I wish Stuart loved her.
I wish people didn’t have to grow old.
I wish I could stop thinking such stupid things.
Jenny
I KNEW IT would happen. There can be no excuses for Charlie and me. It was unforgivable of us to go off leaving an old, club-footed, frail lady in charge of Grandma without adequate back up – almost criminally negligent. My God, how would it have looked in a court of law? Charlie was furious when I said that, he shouted that no crime had been committed and what the hell was all this about courts of law? He still doesn’t see that anything the least bit dreadful has happened. Well, if Mary gives in her notice he will see it then.
I rang Mary at once of course, as soon as I had heard the whole dreadful saga from Hannah. I apologised, grovelled, begged forgiveness for exposing her to this ordeal and she in turn apologised for having misjudged Grandma’s condition and for ringing Stuart. I did not talk about Stuart, I just ignored that. I really wanted to apologise for how Stuart had behaved, too, but I did not trust myself to start on that one. Mary said she was glad to have that night off and was sure she would be able to stay with Grandma after that, ‘if you still think I am capable’. Did she mean that? Or was the poor woman trying to tell us as nicely as possible that she could not manage any more? Charlie says he has had enough of my crossing bridges before they are even in sight but I cannot help it. Mary is giving signals, I am receiving them.
I am receiving them from Hannah too. Even if, as Charlie maintains, nothing dreadful has happened, surely he can see how very upset Hannah is. She got such a shock, arriving to find Grandma gone and then having that distraught call from Mary. She told me that as she ran to the hospital she was sure Grandma had been horribly injured and was dying and it would be her fault for arriving late and for not having offered to stay with her in the first place. And then seeing Grandma in that ward was a shock, too. Hannah said that, although Grandma looked so sweet and was quite happy, it made her seem so helpless and vulnerable. The signal was flashed unmistakably: in a Home Grandma would look even more so.
Charlie rang Stuart. I sat beside Charlie when he called Stuart and his brother’s hectoring voice was so loud I could hear every word. The conversation went roughly like this:
Stuart, it’s me.
You’ve taken your time.
What?
I’ve been waiting for you to ring, what the hell did you think you were doing?
Well, we went to this Silver –
I know where you went, I’m not talking about that, it’s none of my business, what I’m referring to is telling that woman to ring me.
Well, we had to give her someone’s number in case of an emergency and we thought –
You thought? That’s what you bloody well didn’t do, mate. You can’t have been thinking at all because if you’d thought you’d have remembered I’m not in on this, I had enough a long time ago. I’m not having any more of my life messed up by Mother and I’ve told you straight.
It was only –
Never mind only, you’ve got yourself into this mess, I told you what would happen, you’re a mug, Charlie, you should see sense and put a stop to it.
Well, normally the system works quite well but with Bridget being –
Don’t mention Bridget to me, don’t try that blackmail.
Blackmail? I never even thought of it. I was just going to say that with Bridget being away we –
I’m not interested, if Bridget wants to be a martyr then that’s her affair but count me out, don’t ever do that to me again.
I won’t.
Good.
I’m sorry you were bothered.
Now there’s no need to be like that, I’m just giving it to you straight from the shoulder, I never did like hypocrisy, but there’s nothing personal in it.
No?
No. You’ve got to be tough in this world, Charlie. You’ve only got one life and you can’t afford to let it be spoiled.
She’s our Mother, Stuart, and –
Good God, I know she’s our Mother, what do you think you’re telling me? You think I’m a brute, eh? Well, I’m not. I know she’s our Mother, I know she’s old and sick, I know she can’t help it but it’s the other bit I’m not having, the bit where Bridget says it’s our duty to look after her. I don’t see it, Charlie. I shored her up all through my childhood. Oh, I know it wasn’t her fault, nothing that happened was her fault, and I admit she was a good mother, very good, but that doesn’t mean I have to go on paying for it all my life. She should be in a Home and that’s that.
There’s not much point in me saying anything.
No, there isn’t. You should ring the Social Services and get them to take Mother on.<
br />
Anyway, I’m sorry.
Why on earth should Charlie be sorry? Stuart is Grandma’s son too, he is part of this whether he likes it or not. I was furious with Charlie. Suppose Stuart and Paula went off for a night and left a babysitter with our telephone number and there was an emergency and we were called, would we have been so indignant? Of course not. We would have flown round and been only too glad to take charge. The minute he hung up I asked Charlie why he was in such a hurry to apologise, why he was so nice to Stuart, why he even listened to him? He said Stuart was merely pointing out, yet again, that the whole Grandma situation is a nonsense, and that it should be sorted out. I asked sarcastically how this sorting out would be done and Charlie said by doing what Stuart said, by putting Grandma in a Home, now, before Bridget returned. That was the nasty bit. The idea of making any decision about Grandma without Bridget being party to it was wicked. I said so. Charlie said he wasn’t particularly bothered about the wickedness so much as the impossibility. Stuart had said the thing to do was ring the Social Services. Charlie was now thinking of doing this, of saying we couldn’t cope any more – maybe they would be obliged to do something. Charlie said if you thought about it, it was true that we couldn’t cope – there must be places for the senile demented who have no money and no one to care for them. Perhaps, Charlie said, we had to be cruel to be kind. The cliché left me speechless.
But Charlie acted on Stuart’s suggestion. He rang the Social Services and said the support system for looking after his senile mother had collapsed and his sister was away and he didn’t know what to do. To his astonishment a temporary place was offered at once in a place called Birchholme. They would take Grandma for a week to give us ‘time to make alternative arrangements’ until the sister came back from holiday. Charlie was elated, said he should have thought of this ages ago, blamed Bridget for not letting him enquire before. He insisted we must at least go and look at Birchholme and, if it was half decent, give it a try. It would have been silly of me to object.
Birchholme was no St Alma’s but then how could a Council Home be? (Actually, why not?) It was a large, Victorian building, quite unsuitable for old people because of all the stairs and rather daunting because of the high ceilings and long corridors. Yet it wasn’t depressing – the walls were brightly painted with plenty of posters and there were nice touches like a piano in the corner of the main sitting room and a big fish tank and even a cage of budgerigars. The staff seemed young and did not wear those off-putting overalls so beloved of institutions. It was all, in fact, a little too casual, I thought. I could not see that there was any real supervision going on – not that I wanted regimentation but I wanted Grandma to feel secure. The Matron, a mere slip of a girl it seemed to me, was alarmingly blunt. She said it was true, there was no close supervision, they did not have the staff for it, and it was also true the old folk had to be prepared to shift for themselves a bit. I said my mother-in-law couldn’t shift for herself at all so what would happen to her? The Matron said they would get round to her in the end. What that was supposed to mean I didn’t like to think.
Charlie put it to Mary the next day: he said we had an offer of a place in Birchholme for one week only and in view of the way things were going he would like to try it, but he certainly did not want to dispense with her services and would pay her for that week. Mary said she did not want to be paid and that she thought Birchholme was probably a good experiment because, with the best will in the world, she did not know if she could carry on indefinitely. Charlie was quite triumphant at the ease of these negotiations. It has all happened with such speed I do not know what to think. Tomorrow we take Grandma in. Charlie will come with me – he must, I could not do it myself. It was quite bad enough taking her, during that short period, to the Day Centre and leaving her. And Charlie can tell Hannah and Adrian. I cannot. Hannah will be so upset, she will see no reason for it. She will ask us if Bridget knows.
*
I had to pack a case for Grandma, of course, and there was no way of doing this without her seeing and misunderstanding. She said she had forgotten to save her comics and had nothing to read on the journey. I comforted her, told her I would find some comics and that the journey was not long. I ought to have emphasised that she was not going to the Highlands but I did not have the heart. Where was the harm? Well, I could have fathomed that for myself: the harm was in the excitement. She grew flushed and agitated watching me and worrying about where she had put all kinds of items that would be essential in the Highlands. Then she began calling for her brothers and her father. The feeling of deliberately misleading her grew and grew, and, in the end, I could bear it no longer. I sat her down and sat down myself in front of her. I held her hands, sweaty with excitement, and looked at her steadily and told her that she was not going to the Highlands, I said she was going to a kind of holiday home for a week, to give her a little break. I said it was very nice and that I would visit her every day. She smiled and said, ‘Right-oh, anything you say.’
It was the usual fuss getting her into the car, the usual agony getting her out. It exasperates Charlie though he is not generally an impatient man. We were all hot and bothered by the time we walked through the front door of Birchholme. Then, the minute we were inside, we were confronted by an old woman on a walking-frame coming towards us, inching her way painfully along the corridor. Grandma began tut-tutting and poor-souling and I wished we could avoid a confrontation. But we could not. The old woman pushed her walking-frame right up to us and said to Grandma, ‘They put you in here to die – don’t you believe anything they tell you – that’s what they do, put us here to die.’ At that moment a young woman in a bright pink boiler-suit came out of the sitting room and said, ‘Oh, shut up Marjorie, you’re an old moan.’ As she said it, she smiled at Grandma and nodded and then led Marjorie, still crying doom, away. Grandma said she thought she would get off home because the men would be in for their tea.
We took her into the sitting room and took her coat off and found her a seat and then Charlie went to find some tea. There was nothing institutional about the way the chairs were arranged. They were grouped round small tables, some in threes and some in fours. We had chosen a threesome. Grandma sat in a comfortable wing chair, and I pulled up an extra stool for me. To her right was a very small, shrivelled old woman with a prominent deaf aid in her left ear and to her left a remarkably lively, straight-backed woman with a disconcertingly direct stare. She stared at me, then at Grandma. Grandma said, ‘It’s cold for the time of year, isn’t it?’ The starer said, ‘No.’ Grandma said, ‘Please yourself,’ then winked at me and began to whistle. The deaf old lady woke up and shouted, ‘Cut that bloody row!’ Grandma stopped, her mouth still shaped in a silent, shocked whistle. She mouthed at me, ‘Is it time to go?’
Charlie came with tea. He pulled up another chair and while Grandma slurped the tea eagerly he tried to chat to the other two old women. But the deaf one had gone back to sleep and the starer would not talk to him. She turned aside and literally put her chin in the air. I looked around desperately for someone more congenial to sit Grandma beside. Across the room there was a group of four old women who seemed to be enjoying themselves in marked contrast to the other somnolent inmates. They were laughing occasionally and chattering and I longed for Grandma to be part of that group, even though I knew she would not be capable of making any new relationships or sustaining any kind of sensible conversation. I watched them and, when one got up and walked off and did not return, I nodded at Charlie. We helped Grandma up – she got up quite easily and smartly because she thought we were going home – and trundled her across to the other group. They went silent instantly. Charlie said this was his mother, Mrs McKay, and she had come for a little holiday. He asked their names: Alice, Vera and Mrs Dorothy Gibson. He asked each of them how long they had been at Birchholme – an unwise question I was sure. I was right. They all three seemed offended. We were making no progress whatsoever and there was the uncomfortable feeling of ha
ving intruded.
I left Charlie and went off to find the Matron. She was in her office, a chaotic cluttered place, unpacking what looked like trays from a large cardboard box. She was on her knees and, though she looked up and smiled distractedly, she carried on with what she was doing, making some comment that these were not the sort of clip-on trays she wanted. I said I was worried about leaving my mother-in-law who seemed so isolated in the sitting room. I said she liked to chat but she was quite nervous with strangers and sensitive to any hostility. The Matron brushed this fear aside. She said some of them were a little clique-ish, but it would be all right and she reminded me that Grandma wouldn’t really know she was among strangers, that she would probably think she was back at school. She advised me just to go and, obviously trying to make it easier, she stopped unpacking and said she would come and sit with Grandma for a minute. I was so grateful. We went back into the sitting room where Charlie was now sitting alone with his mother. The other three had gone off, he said, arm in arm. For Charlie, he looked quite worried.
Matron brought over a dignified old lady whom she introduced as Violet. She told us Violet was ninety-two but had all her faculties. Violet promptly recited ‘Come into the garden, Maud’. Unfortunately, Grandma, who was absolutely delighted, joined in and Violet was most offended. Grandma asked her if she liked poetry and Violet said it had its place. She was watching Grandma very closely. After Grandma had made some quite unconnected, inconsequential remarks, impossible to reply to, Violet turned to the Matron and asked, ‘Does she have her faculties?’ Grandma was startled and said ‘bloomin’ cheek’ and ‘faculties indeed’ and ‘some people are the limit’. Matron just laughed, patting Violet’s knee and said ‘How about a sing-song ladies?’ Then she took them off, Violet on one arm and Grandma on the other, towards the piano, and called for someone called Freda. Freda, another jeans-and-jumper member of staff, rushed in and began playing ‘My Old Man Said Follow The Van.’ It seemed a good time to leave.
Have the Men Had Enough? Page 19